Total Freedom: The Essential Krishnamurti

John Armstrong

In Search of Civilization

A self-effacing, humane and unparanoid call to change our wealthy yet often barbaric world for the better. * In this provocative cri de coeur, the philosopher John Armstrong rescues the idea of civilization from irrelevance and connects it to our search for individual happiness. Civilization once referred to a society's technological prowess, its political development, or its cultural achievement. In the modern era, however, the word became burdened by the legacy of colonialism and connotations of elitism. For it to have value once again, according to Armstrong, we must understand that a society balances material prosperity with spiritual prosperity if it is to merit the term civilized--and currently we are impoverished. In Search of Civilization is his corrective. As he roams from anecdote to aesthetic appreciation--from the banality of an early job at an insurance company to the redemptive wonders of a seventeenth-century church spire visible out an office window, from Adam Smith's philosophy to the Japanese tea ceremony--Armstrong reminds us that culture lies within us and that its nourishment is essential to a flourishing society.

Julia Kristeva

Hatred and Forgiveness

Julia Kristeva refracts the impulse to hate (and our attempts to subvert, sublimate, and otherwise process it) through psychoanalysis and text, exploring worlds, women, religion, portraits, and the act of writing. Her inquiry spans themes, topics, and figures central to her writing, and her paths of discovery advance the theoretical innovations that are so characteristic of her thought. Kristeva rearticulates and extends her analysis of language, abjection, idealization, female sexuality, love, and forgiveness. She examines the "maladies of the soul," utilizing examples from her practice and the ailments of her patients, such as fatigue, irritability, and general malaise. She sources the Bible and texts by Marguerite Duras, St. Teresa of Avila, Roland Barthes, Simone de Beauvoir, and Georgia O'Keefe. Balancing political calamity and individual pathology, she addresses internal and external catastrophes and global and personal injuries, confronting the nature of depression, obliviousness, fear, and the agony of being and nothingness. Throughout Kristeva develops the notion that psychoanalysis is the key to serenity, with its processes of turning back, looking back, investigating the ...

Terri Apter

The Confident Child: Raising Children to Believe in Themselves

Raising confident, motivated children is a parent's greatest challenge. In this sage, compassionate, and practical guidebook, renowned social psychologist and Cambridge researcher Terri Apter presents a clear-cut, thoughtful strategy for parents who want to promote self-confidence in their child.